


ZombieLand Rules to Cry About

by prodigalsanyo



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Gen, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombieland (2009) References, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21913615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigalsanyo/pseuds/prodigalsanyo
Summary: The first time when a Harvard boy lets a girl get close, she almost kills him.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	ZombieLand Rules to Cry About

“Oh crap, I’m freaking out,” he said to himself while studying for Psych. His Wheat Thins were stacked as high as the DSM textbook opened on his study table. It wasn’t the impending exam that spooked him so much as the Sociopathy chapter. His family’s Christmas photo, taken in November ‘98, graced the chapter cover. Notoriety came with having a serial killer in the family.

The mounds of his palm were thudding the table, his breath reduced to starved gasps before he realized that he was freaking out. Most likely his mother and little sister were visiting with his serial killer father at Claremont Psychiatric Hospital. He practiced his breathing exercises and paced his dorm room, wiping his sweaty palms down his burgundy H A R V A R D sweater. 

He sipped his carbonated bottle of Lipton’s diet green tea. If it weren’t for Wheat Thins and Lipton’s, he would be like the skeleton hanging out in Bio labs.

On a Saturday night when his peers were carousing or circling up for studies, Harvard preferred to keep to himself like the paranoid shut-in he was. Between his diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, and the night terrors, he didn’t do friends. Most of them politely said his name and drifted off blankly.

It was a Saturday night and here he was, shutting the book on his family’s photo. He knocked over his leaning stack of Wheat Thins. His hand jerked and his sweater drank up all his Lipton’s diet green tea.

He peeled off his sweater and removed his Oxford shirt. He’d shaved this morning but the alcoholic looking stubble was in place as though he’d skipped an AA meeting. His Jew curls were taking over his relaxed brown hair. He supposed he had very blue eyes, but he’d grown up hearing relatives say that he had his father’s eyes. So, ew.

No friends. One study buddy who definitely used him for notes. Notches on his bed, all him and his demons rolling in the hay.

His chances of one day taking home a girl… no, scratch that. His chances of following a girl home to meet her functional family… no, not stalking, double damn. He might need to turn to the Russians for this one. He knew hearsay about mail order brides from Russia although he hated how it sounded. How would she arrive? A tiny girl in a big box–

He was throwing up in the toilet.

Maybe the Koreans. He liked how they dressed, how they packed their mild foods into tidy bento. He would be content with a little waifu, her ring on his finger and his black Magnus card in her Hermès bag swiping endlessly for secret lovers, purses, and shoes.

His future waifu would require a side piece. The leather bonds permanently affixed to his bed frame made him look like an animal in bed. But in reality he was more of a wily critter that liked having its hair brushed and sugar on a stick. His head meds screwed with his equipment, so the Mrs. would have to take the initiative for her own orgasms. It would be written in the pre-nup by… whats-her-name, the business manager charged with their family estate.

Pride? No parade for him.

Dignity? Locked up and chained to a wall somewhere.

As Harvard flushed down his sick, he heard a frantic rapping on his door.

He stilled and pretended not to be in.

“Help me! Please, oh, help!” shouted a girl.

He pressed his very blue eye to the door, peeped a girl with artlessly beach-y wavy blond hair. As she raised her arm to pound another desperate measure, he saw the faded half of an inked heart peeking out of her cardigan.

Oh, sh– it was 373. He knew her by the numbers on her mailbox. Ideally, she knew him as 473 and not the sleepwalking maniac. 

He shoved his neat little row of head meds into his pants pockets, hoped that the bulges wouldn’t look inappropriate.

Before Harvard knew it, she was on his couch, accepting a drink glass from him. 

“It’s Lipton’s, do you mind?” he asked.

“I can drink anything, thanks,” said 373. She sipped his diet tea and pinched her lips. “Do you have diet coke by any chance?”

He didn’t. His guest placed the glass on his coffee table, hugging herself beneath his blanket.

She let him clean and bandage two ugly scratches festering her arm. As someone who frequently awakened with new cuts and scrapes, he was stocked with gauze and med tape.

“Do you want to talk about it?” asked Harvard. He scrunched onto the other end of the couch.

Then 373 launched herself at him. Her cardigan on his bare skin made his nipples harden, reminding him that he was shirtless. He was not OK with what his body did there. 

She clung to him.

“Some upperclassman, loaded up on drugs, attacked me!” she said, sniffling. The more upset she became, the more clearly he detected a regional accent. Carolinas? He liked the sound of Carolinas over number 373.

“I’m so, so sorry this happened to you. You’re safe now,” assured Harvard.

She noticed the live steel which he illegally mounted to the living area walls. It wasn’t like he had any suite mates to tattle. Rebellion was shiny.

“Should I feel safe? You could be an axe murderer,” said Carolinas pointedly.

“These are for show. Loved throwing 'em,” said Harvard. At her incredulous look, he briskly added, ”Not at people, or animals. I like getting’ 'em in a circle.”

“Just what are you studying at our illustrious establishment?”

“Majoring in Psych,” he said.

“You’re a Psych major,” said Carolinas, smiling mischievously. “What do you think Freud would say about your collection of axes and your sword?”

“He would deduce that I’m an… axe enthusiast,” said Harvard.

“You don’t think maybe you’re compensating for something.”

“My boredom. I hated all that negative space that I could fill with axes,” answered Harvard. “Obviously.”

His eyes twinkled. “If you wrote a primer, what would it say about me?”

“You’re definitely compensating,” retorted Carolinas.

Harvard smiled with more of a conspiracy bent. “A part of my brain does look at my wall and think 'Ooo, dicks.’ But that’s textbook. It’s more fun to throw out guesses. Throw axes.”

Carolinas chuckled and hugged the blanket to herself, putting her head on his shoulder. He liked how her delicate face tucked naturally into his shoulder. 

“You scare me,” she said, nodding off. 

Their IVF test tube babies would be model humans. They would find a wet nurse and a nanny, as was his family’s custom of having the children and giving the job of rearing them to others.

“You scare me, too,” he said. If her eyes weren’t closed, he would’ve brushed her beach-y hair from her cheek. 

Harvard drifted off himself, dreamed that he was eating Sunday dinner with Carolina’s folks and their food didn’t make him upend his stomach. In his dream, as he reached for the platter of shrimp, a steaming hot hand encased in a pink shell, smelling like lemon and rosemary, punched through his plate, gripping his face before he could scream. Steamed crust crunched into his nose and red shrimp tails dug into his scalp.

He bumped his shins on the coffee table, his own hands covering his forehead and his gaping mouth. The bruising pain assured him that he was in the real world where shrimp was inedible to him and he would never in real life let down his guard for a platter of shrimp.

Carolinas wasn’t on the couch. She was hunched rather awkwardly, facing his Freudian wall. He saw her handling his unsheathed sword which inexplicably ramped up his chronic baseline anxiety.

“That’s, uh, a 17th century katana. It’s expensive… and very sharp!” he added, fogged by sleep.

His shins were still hurting as she slowly turned, her breathing ragged like a perpetual death rattle. Blood soaked drool hung in thick strings from her jaw. Her irises gleamed like dead fish in ethnic markets which Harvard occasionally patroned for import biscuits. Her skin had tightened around her delicate skull, thinned her cheeks, wilted her lips as though an inferno raged within, burned away her humanity and froze the leftover horror for a damned eternity.

He tumbled backwards and fell heels over head out of love and into survival mode. Waving the sword around in stiff and uncoordinated swipes, Carolinas chased him around the living area, the katana scraping and gouging the walls and upholstery. She cornered him into the dead end of a locked door accessible only to maintenance staff. Harvard was not going to slide out of this one. 

“Here goes nothing,” he muttered as he ran at her in zigzags. 

[Rule #1: CARDIO]

As she predictably swung his katana, snaking her black tongue like a fire walking Hindi goddess, Harvard launched himself bodily at the floor, letting his abs take the hit, tucking in his stiff arms and legs, sliding under the blue ripple of deadly steel. Another 5 degrees tilted and she would have scalped him. The katana split his hairs instead, killing his style. Harvard scrabbled, hands and knees, and grabbed another mounted weapon.

“Please! Leave me alone!” he screamed, lost to the pain, the panic, the brown cuttings of his hair tickling his cheek. “Wake up! Wake up!”

She ignored the axe he wielded and charged in all her brokenness. Her growling startled him and he threw his weapon blindly screaming apologies. The sheer weight of the axe knocked her over and pinned her down. He saw her hair tainted into crusted red tendrils from the blood which she gurgled. Her bloodied hair shrouded her face. Her black tongue slithered like a poison root sprouting from a river of blood. Blood colored in the once faded heart on her sleeve.

He kicked the katana out of her death grip and she almost got him, almost dropped him and dragged him into hell with her. He took up the katana and beheaded her, right there, muck and gore splattering his loveseat.

[RULE #2: DOUBLETAP.]

The blue and red lights from campus cops on the walls of his living area snapped him out of his daze. He remembered the most terrifying moment of his life, face to face with the man that made him.

“I love you, my boy, because we are the same,” doted the man who killed like 23 people. Half of his father’s face was a cool blue and the other scarlet from the blood he shed remorselessly, two halves of an abomination.

The police were going to find him and the puddle of girl; the case would be open and shut. They would chain him next to his father who loved the sound of his own voice. He could almost hear father critiquing his murder of Carolina and offering his own methods bracketed by surprisingly humorous anecdotes. Oh, hell no.

Harvard changed his bottoms, as he soiled himself. His hand was shaking so terribly that his pill bottles, each a hefty 90 days supply, rolled and scattered like his incoherent thoughts. He ripped a clean Oxford shirt from its hanger and tidily dressed himself. He pulled on his burgundy H A R V A R D sweater, grateful for the veneer of a well branded institution to cover his broken spirit and shattered mind.

Nothing he could do about his stupid hair. He focused on filling his overnight duffle bag with bare essentials only. A basic grooming kit with a solid rust-proof razor, toothbrush, nail clippers, as though he were camping. Nothing that needed to be plugged in. He used a Ziploc bag to bundle his pills. 

[RULE #2B: ZIPLOC]

Then he tossed the box of Ziploc bags in as well, in anticipation of living his life on the go.

[RULE #2B: MOAR ZIPLOC.]

He turned off his phone and shoved it to the bottom of his duffle; later, he would open it in safe mode and disable his location. He kept his wallet and dumped out everything that wasn’t cash money, no ID or photos. When he needed stuff, the cash would tell people who he was. The last item, his katana, sheathed and rolled inside a beach towel. In minutes, he was strolling to his car.

He tossed his key ring, keeping only the car keys and the spare car key for valets.

[RULE #5: TRAVEL LIGHT]

The door was unlocked. Remembering what Carolina, oh his heart, said about a drug addict attacking her, Harvard circled his vehicle for crouching dangers, saw nothing under the carriage, and chose to throw his duffle into the vacant back seat.

[RULE #10: CHECK THE BACK SEAT]

“Hey, Harvard, got a sec?” he heard from behind him. He knew that voice. He turned around and almost cried.

Like a dream that crowded out a nightmare, a dear friend was inexplicably standing near his car. A familiar hand laid on the scruff of his neck. His resolve to run fast, run far crumbled. 

“Bright, sorry to do this to you, but you weren’t picking up my calls. There’s a situation at Claremont. Your mother and your sister are penned down, the whole facility is in lock down.”

“Gil,” he said, gasping as he readied himself to be cuffed, booked, and jailed. Bright whimpered like a kicked puppy.

Gil was a well-preserved Hispanic man in his late 40s who moderated his drink intake and barely dodged the beer belly. His thick and relatively dark hair, he swept to the side and gelled carefully for a distinguished style. Gil relied on his appearance when he spoke to witnesses, looking good before he asked for a damn thing from strangers.

“What did you do, Bright?” Gil said. He touched at the uneven cut of Bright’s hair.

“I finally snapped and killed someone,” Bright said, crying. “You might as well take me to Claremont and check me in.”

“Oh hell, Bright. You know I batted for you when your mother wanted to put you under house arrest and make you do online school? No, I said, let him have the college experience. Let him meet girls, I said.” Gil was beside himself with disappointment.

“I did. I let a girl in and she almost killed me,” Bright lamented.

“Wait– she attacked you? This was self-defense?” Gil was already thinking through angles to get his boy out of trouble.

“She was trying to rip my throat out with her teeth,” said Bright.

As they were talking, a group of college students dressed to paint the town red ran through the grass and towards the parking lot where Gil and Bright were conversing heatedly. As they got closer, Gil spotted the problem first.

Gil blinked at the girls in the group, noted their blood stained crop tops, the gouges running down their bare arms, and the sinew hanging from their torn out throats. As their collective growling and moaning became obvious with proximity, Gil drew his gun and fired.

“BRIGHT, START THE CAR! GET INSIDE!” Gil hollered.

Bright obeyed as far as turning his car key in the ignition and pocketing the spare. He would not leave Gil alone because the students attacking them were too close and too bold for Gil to shoot down. He grabbed the bundled katana. The beach towel spilled onto the floor mat from the passenger’s seat. He thrust the sheath of the blade under the glove compartment.

For fear of injuring his loved one, Bright kept his distance from Gil, as he fended off mutilated attackers. He didn’t behead all of them cleanly. A couple times he was lucky when their heads flopped into their torsos like nearly headless corpses. Whenever Gil couldn’t put down a monstrous and rabid assailant with his head shots, Bright was figuratively at his back, severing filthy limbs. They didn’t get any prettier with dismemberment.

[RULE# 9: THE BUDDY SYSTEM]

“GET IN! I mean it Bright!” Gil yelled and he tapped the horns twice in warning.

Bright carefully folded himself into the front seat. One wrong move and he could skewer himself and Gil. He buckled in with one hand as Gil pulled out of his spot. Bright’s katana pointed over his shoulder.

“Put that thing away. Christ,” said Gil. “What the hell is this noise your fancy car keeps making? In my day, the check engine light did the trick.”

“Seat belt alarm. New feature,” answered Bright. “Safety first.”

Gil gave him a dirty look but snapped his buckle in. They saw more crowded streets filled with marauding students and young professionals who all appeared to have gone rabid. In all the excitement of hyper animated bodies charging at the car and attempting to smash the windows, neither Gil nor Bright heard the stowaway hunched in the back seat.

Gil tweaked the rear view mirror as he sped up; a bloodstained ghoul reared up chomping away. He swore. Bright froze up, too terrified to look at whose sharp fingers clamped his H A R V A R D sweater.

Gil floored the brakes. Their intruder careened headfirst into the sword point of the katana. Straps dug painfully into their chests but they were both intact.

[RULE #4: BUCKLE UP]

The intruder’s body twitched and jerked until Bright panicked and twisted the blade.

“Get it outta here, Bright!” Gil ordered.

Bright hauled out the body, yanking at its clothes, dragging it onto the pavement. The top of its head squirted like a sprinkler when he grabbed the katana. He wiped the katana off on the corpse and jiggled it to shake off . The blade arched and bent, its blue ripples reflected onto Bright’s eyes. He sheathed the katana, slanting it respectfully.

“Bright,” Gil said in warning. “We’ve got hostiles approaching. If you’re quite done–”

Bright hurriedly climbed into the car. He pulled a jug of hand sanitizer from his glove compartment and proceeded to lather away his hands. He bunched up the beach towel on which he sat and wiped away excess blood.

Gill called 911 on his mobile phone. Their blood chilled when wildcat growling came through the line. Bright’s mother and his sister went straight to voice mail because of course it did.

“You got anymore knives, Bright?” Gil asked. The radio yielded static and the silence weighed on them, heavily threatening to crush their spirits.

“No. I have five– wait, no six! I own six axes! Technically, number six is a hatchet. It’s in my trunk, for emergencies.”

“I don’t want to know,” Gil said. His pulled at his beard. “We’re going to Claremont, get your family out of there. Find out how they are. This country’s finally gone to hell.”

“Oh,” Malcolm said. “My father, too? We’re helping him, too?”

“If we see your father, dead or alive, I’m shooting him. Sorry. I’ve got one bullet left for your father. We have more monsters walking free than is sane.”

“I don’t think anyone can kill my father. He beat the rap, didn’t get the needle,” Malcolm confessed. He hugged the beach towel over his H A R V A R D sweater, shivering as though he would never get warm.

“Try to sleep. It’s gonna be a long ride driving around these abandoned vehicles,” Gil said. 

“I slept,” Bright said.

“Bull.”

“My night terrors come when I pass out. Never skipped a day. On the bright sight, my demons don’t sleep,” he retorted in a peppy tone.

“Put the sword down, at least, I’m asking nicely.” The katana was sheathed but it really didn’t belong in Bright’s white knuckled grip. Gil smacked at the antiquated hilt. Bright dropped it. 

“Rest before the next round,” Gil said. Gil squeezed his hand, briefly.

A piece of candy, cool blue mint, crinkled in his hand. Bright’s eyes softened, his gaze on Gil’s stoic face fixed on a tricky stretch of highway. Gil needed to drive onto the shoulder without dinging Bright’s car. 

[RULE #11: ENJOY THE LITTLE THINGS]

Bright immediately popped the mint into his mouth and his tense muscles slackened, tasting an old memory of the last time he truly felt safe and cared for. He was with the first person he would’ve chosen to go through hell with.

**Author's Note:**

> As an homage to the Zombieland movie, I avoided using first names until Gil showed up.
> 
> Originally posted on tumblr.
> 
> 90% chance I don't continue this. I just wanted to write fun and lost steam weeks ago.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


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